


he says that he loves me- and I'm one sorry motherfucker to have ever doubted so

by FatCatsAndUnicorns



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Living Together, M/M, Post-Canon, Sickfic, Stubborn Thomas Barrow, Thomas Barrow Loves Cats, Thomas Barrow with Feet Pains, Title from 'I'm Alive' by SOAK, Worried Richard Ellis
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:35:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27189418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FatCatsAndUnicorns/pseuds/FatCatsAndUnicorns
Summary: Thomas gets a nasty virus. But he's too stubborn to go to Dr. Clarkson.(Chapters are quite short, about 450-900 words)
Relationships: Thomas Barrow/Richard Ellis
Comments: 4
Kudos: 44





	1. Strawberry Broomsticks

**Author's Note:**

> I'm thinking about making around 4-5 chapters, depends if I put two in one or not.

The shake of the bed woke him up.

Richard’s eyes slowly squinted open, while his other four senses remained dormant. He rotated his body 180 degrees and now his nose was facing the back of Thomas, the curve of his shoulder plates standing out from his cotton undershirt. He reached for the man lazily, his gentle hand founding his sleeping partner with ease. But the slight shaking of the bed was coming from him. Thomas was shivering madly, he found out, as soon as his hand touched the man. His other senses kicked in as he looked down at Thomas in a haze.

“Thomas, my love, wake up,” he whispered, alarmed, eyes watching the butler's teeth chatter away. Richard propped onto his elbows and gently shook Thomas’ shoulder. “It is just a dream,” he assured the shivering man as he continued to jounce him.

Thomas finally woke up with a jolt. 

“What happened? Is someone in the house? Is something on fire?” he asked startled, his Manchester accent heavy with exhaustion. He sat up quickly (almost hitting Richard who was leaning over him), rubbing his face with his frail palms. Richard shook his head. He studied Thomas’ pale face with concentration. Thomas would have called his expression adorable if it had not been for the headache pounding in the back of his head. Richard said: “I merely thought you were having nightmares. Like last week.”  
“I was dreaming about owning a lizard and eating strawberry broomsticks."

“It's just that you were shaking like mad.”

Thomas collected his thoughts and feelings, his brain still three-quarters asleep.  
Then the chattering of teeth came back. His teeth clanked against each other as the cold drowned him once more. A bucket of icy river water splashed onto his head, flooding down to his feet and sogging them to the bone.

“Oh no,” Thomas smiled bitterly, goosebumps crawling up his arms like jovial spiders. “I’m just cold.”

Richard at once left the bed and fetched one of Thomas’ thick woollen sweaters. The bleached wool hugged around Thomas’ body nicely once he put it on, and incredible upgrade from his previous undershirt. Richard also made them both tea, letting Harper, their cat, rest on Thomas's lap as they drank it. Richard watched the cat purr with envy bubbling inside of him, especially when her tail began stroking his lover's arm. The sick butler smiled down at the cat, patting its head.

_Damned cat._

Richard took the teacups back to the kitchen and pushed Harper out of the room, then climbed into bed again and pulled the covers over them. The warmth of their two bodies (heat the pale man oh so desperately needed) was kept in place under the covers, helping Thomas’ body temperature rise gradually.

Wrapping his arms around the man's shivering waist, Richard pressed his chest against his narrow back. Thomas closed his eyes as the warmth of his partner flowed into him in calming tropical waves. The tea helped his guts unfreeze, but his feet still stung. He kept it to himself, of course.

Thomas turned his body into Richard, so now they laid in a tight embrace. "Thank you," he hummed softly onto the space between their peaceful smiles. 

"My pleasure, Mr. Barrow. Anything for my favourite broomstick-eating person."


	2. Red Socks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A few days after Thomas's first cold flash, Richard was woken up again by a similar occurrence.   
> WARNING: high fluff radiation levels. Enter with caution.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took quite longer than I intended, but here it is anyways :)

His body rocked slightly side to side, the frame of the bed vibrating under him. Richard’s eyes fluttered open, flashing onto Thomas’s ghost-white face next to him. But he wasn’t shivering. Not as much as he was before.   


“What on earth are you doing?”

Thomas slowly rolled over to face Richard. “I’m rubbing my feet together. Did I wake you up? I’m sorry if I did. I’ll stop now,” he murmured with an embarrassed frown, eyes avoiding Richard’s gaze (which softened drastically).  The pale man let out a long sigh as he buried himself under the bed’s thick duvet.   
“It’s just that my left foot feels like it’s stuck in a block of ice,” he grumbled with a raw voice, the bottom half of his head hidden by the blanket. “And then every few minutes, it aches sharply.”

Worry began swirling like a witches cauldron at the pit of Richard’s stomach.  The events of  _ that night  _ trickled back into his memory. The way Thomas woke up shivering like mad, and Harper stealing the glory of his healing.

But his healing hadn’t worked much, Richard mused. Because the butler, had in fact, begun to look sicker after that night. More often than not, his cheeks shone a similar shade to Mrs. Patmore’s newest stock of powdered marshmallows and his curved nose burned a faint red as well. The apples of his cheeks were tinted a rose gold shade, the rest of his face in a dim ghost-white silver. Now that he thought about it (Thomas’s feet continued to grind together in the background), just four days ago, while he was walking past Thomas, he heard him mutter about  _ the damned Arctic winds _ when it just a temper afternoon.

But the thing that worried him the most was that he actually felt quite warm and snug in bed. He was wearing less than Thomas, just an undershirt and a thin sweater, and rested under the same blankets. The night wasn’t even distinctively cold either.

“Your thoughts are too loud,” Thomas weakly as he shuffled back out of the covers and let his head drop next to Richard’s warm shoulder. “They’re giving me a headache.” His left foot now began to create friction against his right ankle.

With a swift move, Richard’s hand reached under the covers and lightly grabbed the cloth of Thomas’s pyjama trousers. He bought it up to his waist, and Thomas instinctively bent the knee to be in a more comfortable position. Thomas said, “You really don’t have to do this,” chuckling quietly.  Richard ignored the man’s remark and began to create friction (and heat) against his red, woollen sock. His actions brought him back to the days when he polished silver as a footman.

Thomas watched him with a closed grin on his face. “I can’t believe Mr. Richard William Ellis, former valet to his Majesty, is bringing back to life the foot of an ordinary York butler,” he said softly. The man in question looked directly into his grey, cloudy eyes. “You’re not ordinary. And I do wish you would stop saying things like that. But I’m glad it’s helping.”

He continued to move his hands around Thomas’s foot as if he was rolling play-doh. The friction against the sock's fibers even began to make his own hands’ skin smooth and soft.

“You can go back to sleep now. It doesn’t hurt anymore, and now my foot is indeed quite warm,” Thomas yawned widely, lowering his knee of Richard’s waist and tucking it between his lover’s shins.  They tangled their arms around each other, and soon, their eyes gradually began to drop.

The only sound in the room was their serene breathing, their chest rising and falling in a melodic tune. “Thank you. I love you. You melt my heart,” Thomas breathed out with a sigh. A small smile bloomed across Richard’s docile face. His eyes were effortlessly closed, one arm around the butler and another behind his head. Thomas never was the type of man to profess his love to others, and it swelled Richard’s heart whenever he did. 

“I love you too. But you should go and see Mr. Clarkson,” Richard crooned as he pulled the covers up to their shoulders (eyes still closed). Thomas hummed in response, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.

“Goodnight, my dear.”

“Goodnight.”


End file.
